Problem isolation and determination of problems for complex systems such as information technology (IT) systems and consumer electronics products are time and cost consuming, and often prone to errors. These create significant problems increasingly so because systems are becoming more and more complex and the time scale over which they change is becoming ever shorter. Corporations spend tens of millions of dollars annually training and supporting contact center personnel who have very high turnover rates. Customer satisfaction depends on the ability of the corporation to quickly and correctly identify and resolve customer problems.
Current solutions include document search, case based reasoning, rules based and decision tree systems. Document search is inefficient because it does not take advantage of the extensive structure of the problem resolution knowledge and does not allow efficient knowledge reuse. The other solutions can be inefficient and depend, to a large extent, on the expertise of the individual using them. They are very difficult to maintain and keep up-to-date.